


as the world had its fun.

by heartshapedcookie, heereandqueer



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: M/M, Trauma, anniversaries are the worst part of trauma, ben garcia is an angel, ends sweet i promise, sometimes a bitch has to cope, there's a reference to drug abuse, this is so so short and im not a fan of That but it be like that sometimes, tired boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 05:29:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13451529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcookie/pseuds/heartshapedcookie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/heereandqueer/pseuds/heereandqueer
Summary: Ethan checks the calendar, even though he knows he won't like what he sees.





	as the world had its fun.

**Author's Note:**

> im @tinylittle-femalechrist on Tumblr and i officially use ethan to cope so that's just where we are now and im terribly valid for doing so

as the world had its fun.

 

He’s using Ben’s MacBook, not his hulking Toshiba that can run sixteen different programs without even flinching and still has the plastic film laminated to the screen because he doesn’t trust himself not to fuck up colossally and scratch it. Ben’s MacBook is light and slim and efficient, which he hates, but the homescreen wallpaper—a Christmas photo, sweaters and scruffy smiles and soft focus—quells his frustrations for a brief moment. The background of his own laptop is the standard swirl of cobalt shapes and starry pixels: he was too self-conscious to ever use a personal photograph at the station and still balks at the thought of his personal life seeping into the workplace. His trust is hard to earn, his suspicions even more difficult to resolve.

 

But he’s using Ben’s MacBook because his Toshiba is out in the living room with Ben, who is arguing incredulously with the Fox News anchors. He doesn’t know why Ben watches Fox News if he’s just going to spend the half-hour block hurling obscenities at the grinning, gimlet-eyed hypocrites—it’s a journalistic instinct, he supposes. Ben is yelling about tax cuts in the other room, his accent thickening with every heated word, and Cooper is jingling through the apartment and Nebula is snoozing contentedly in a patch of sunlight next to him and he’s clicking the Calendar app.

 

The little icon bounces once, twice, then opens. He stares at the grid for a moment, feeling terrifically numb; he squeezes his left hand into a fist as if doing so will release the tension that has locked every sinew in his body into place. It doesn’t work. There’s a taste in the pits of his molars like chalk dust and plastic—pill capsules. He swallows convulsively. Five months since going clean and sometimes,  _ sometimes,  _ he can feel that bruise. 

 

He scrolls down to March, just a week away. Squeeze, swallow, stare. His therapist has a theory about him, about how he feels compelled to re-traumatize himself, about his compulsions and anxieties and exposures. He hates when people are right about him. 

 

_ March sixteenth. _

 

It’s going to be on a Tuesday this year. Tuesdays are the worst, really, he would rather suffer through a week of Mondays than endure a single Tuesday, especially a Tuesday where they’ll bring in Krupa’s brother to speak about his sister’s legacy and the office will have that sepulchral atmosphere and everyone will know on some level that it’s his fault Krupa herself isn’t in the corner office organizing the distribution of her own product.

 

He hates his therapist.

 

Ethan doesn’t notice the absence of yelling until Ben leans through the doorway, brow furrowed in concern. His curls are piled into an almost-bun, spurting stray wisps, and he’s changed from his stiff work clothes into the rattiest “NPR” tee-shirt he owns and sweats, and he’s there, in the doorway. Ben is the constant, the unshakable foundation, the cornerstone. Ben was there on March fifteenth, opening his arms, and he was there on March sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth. Ben is Ben at all times and he didn’t leave once and that should make him feel guilty, but his therapist hounds him constantly about self-worth and the concept of deserving love, so he abstains from jumping down the rabbit hole. 

 

“What’cha doing? Spying on me?” Ben asks, shooting him a dorky smile. 

 

Ben is Ben and he’ll still be Ben on March sixteenth.

 

“Yeah,” he replies with a halfhearted smirk. “You thought you could hide all of this from me?”

 

“I know you hate lizards, but babe, I’m telling you, a tiny reptile is just the thing we need for this place,” Ben says so seriously that Ethan has to pause and wonder if Ben really has been shopping for lizards on the side. “Now come back in here,  _ Grey’s  _ is about to start.”

  
Ben holds him a little tighter that evening, tapping his fingers soothingly up and down Ethan’s arm to an imaginary beat. They watch  _ Grey’s Anatomy,  _ which indulges Ben’s love for soap operas and Ethan’s affection for pointing out medical inaccuracies, and Ben is there and he only thinks about March sixteenth once and Ben is there and Ben is there and Ben is there.


End file.
